"All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not."

Friday, November 7, 2014

A life repurposed

Sometimes, I think I've lived a thousand
different lives, as a thousand different people.

Some of those lives were capable of bravery,
and heroism. Others, I try to forget.

Today, I had one of those bumps with the
past, that nasty jolt, and it all comes back. 2004 was one of the years I
started over, broken heart fragments clinging to everything I touched. In
hindsight, I was begging for a bad relationship. I had no trouble finding
it.

In the aftermath of all that
not-so-interesting domestic abuse, I found myself standing outside of a women's
shelter, a ripped trash bag with a few of my things, wearing pajamas.

I stood outside, looking at the door and
realized how much a home matters. A home matters, especially when all you
have in the world is a trash bag, filled with uninteresting shit.

I think I might've stood out there all night,
trying to talk myself into crawling back to the life that I had before. I
might have to beg a little (or a lot), and while I was mulling it over, one of
the workers welcomed me in.

I felt like a fraud. Most of the women
had a string of abusive boyfriends, or abusive parents. I wanted to tell
them that I chose this asshole who put his hands on me, because I was grieving
the man I loved. I wanted to tell them that this was my punishment for
losing the one good thing I had been given. Instead, I said nothing.

The problem with saying nothing is everyone
assumes the worst. It must be so bad that words can’t even cover the
horror.

Part of me was so disconnected from
everything, almost like I was watching the bad choices of someone else, someone
who should know better, but still kept on fucking up.

Tori was was the first person I met there.We shared a room.She had a fargoesque accent that completely
clashed with her California upbringing.She was the first person who treated me like a person, and showed me
around.Neither one of us had anyone or
anything to go back to.Her family lived
in California, and other than sending her money from time to time, they wanted
nothing to do with her.

Living in the shelter was comforting, at
first, with the structure and chores and days of bland nothing.One day, Tori told me about a place she’d
heard about, a women’s shelter in a prominent part of town She would have to
pay $125 a week, but it was a house.Almost a home.

When she asked me if I wanted to come, I said
yes.I was just waiting to be
asked.

Some of the decisions I’ve made were bad,
some stupid, but this was one of the worst I’ve ever made.It all just kind of spiraled out of control
from that one yes.

Part of me knew better.I had a bad feeling about the whole
thing.Having to pay to stay in a
shelter?It seemed wrong to me, and I
couldn’t fit the pieces of why together in a way to say it out loud, so
instead, I said nothing.

The house was beautiful.Four bedrooms, a huge basement area, two
bathrooms and a lovely kitchen.I felt
my heart lift a little, and thought my gut instinct was wrong.I wanted to be wrong, and find something good
for once.

I worried most about how I was going to come
up with that $125/week.I wasn’t
working, and had no job prospects.Luckily, Janey (the head of the house) had a way for us to earn that
money.We were expected to work for an organization called “Save a life, give
a phone.”The premise of it was that we
called people, scheduled drop off boxes so cell phones could be donated,
reprogrammed, and given to women in domestic violence situations, pretty much
like the shoes I was now standing in.

The premise sounds pretty amazing,
right?It was, at first, considering that
we got to work, live in a nice house, and help other women in our situation.

I got blindsided by the shiny wrapping that
this particular dog turd was wrapped in.First, we only worked a few hours a day.I later figured out, it was exactly enough hours to pay for that
$125/week rent, with nothing left over.Talk about going from one abusive situation to another.Second, since I had a lot of computer
experience, the head guy, Domingo, decided I could be his secretary.I really enjoyed that work, getting to be his
right hand, typing out invoices, scheduling press releases to get as many
phones as possible donated to our organization.

That gnawing feeling of unease never really
left me, and I felt like the bottom would drop out of my situation at any
time.Every night I’d go to sleep, and
dream I was falling.

Me being me, I couldn’t leave it alone.On this particular Monday morning, Domingo
had left his computer with me.I was
supposed to compose a couple of memos to the rest of the staff, but as soon as
he was out of my sight, I started going through the files on his computer.I checked his email, sent, trash, documents,
hard drive.I found a big old nothing.Part of me felt a little relieved.I wanted him to be legit, even though my gut
told me he was a douche.I started
composing his memos, when that little devil on my shoulder whispered, “Check
his recycle bin.Couldn’t hurt.”

Everything I’d felt in my stomach for weeks,
was in that folder.Emails, documents,
all the things he didn’t want anyone to see.He’d been selling the high end phones to buyers.There were negotiations on price, a complete
list of email addresses of the various buyers who were making him rich.I forwarded all the information to my email
address.Then, I did a little internet research
and found out that this kind of thing wasn’t new to him.He was a scam artist.

I shouldn’t have said anything; I should’ve
just moved out and went on about my life.Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

The girl I told ended up telling him
everything.He was waiting for me when I
got home.He told me that I needed to
get out, because I was spreading gossip.I just smiled at him and said ok.Watching his face when I told him I’d found his special folder made my
day.I think he wanted to try to
negotiate with me, or maybe bribe me, but I ran out of that house, into another
life.

It was cold, and the wind was blowing through
the sweatshirt I was wearing.I had only
the clothes on my back and nothing in my pockets, but that feeling of dread and unease was
gone.Maybe I didn’t know what my next
move was, and maybe I had to sleep under a bridge, but I’d make it.